Motivation is basically the inner engine that drives us to set goals and move toward them. When our motivation is high, we are more driven to achieve and more ready to invest our time, energy, and emotions to reach something that feels important. When it is low, the opposite happens: goal setting itself becomes weaker, and the effort we put in naturally drops. In a workplace context, this shift is directly tied to how satisfied people are in their jobs, how happy they are at work, how well they perform, and how strongly they feel connected to the broader goals of their team or company (1) (2) . Over time, sustained low motivation and its accompanying effects can wear down both sides: the individual employee and the organization as a whole. In this blog series, we will examine workplace motivation through three major motivational theories. Instead of focusing only on how to “boost” motivation, we will explore the psychological mechanisms that shape it. In this first article, we b...
Alexithymia is a personality construct whose Latin compounds literally mean “no words for feelings” . In this text you're going to read about: The emergence of the alexithymia concept, Description of alexithymia by Sifneos and Nemiah, Explanatory examples for the core features, Recent approaches, Empathic abilities in alexithymia, Neural substrates Historically, alexithymia was first put forward in the context of somatoform disorders by Sifneos (1970) as a dichotomous clinical variable based on a conjoint work with Nemiah. In fact, clinical observations related to alexithymia were already reported by many psychiatrists, way before Sifneos brought about the term. At that time, psychosomatic disorders were explained through Freudian theories which highlight the unconscious conflicts as a reason for physical symptoms. However, difficulties to reach empirical evidence which has already caused to get theories of Freud frequent criticism throughout his life continued to be t...